The period of American Literary Works

Colonial Period (1607-1775). The main characterize of colonial period was religious. Generally, the content of fictional works contain about god that god determined people’s fate and people were bad and must be saved by Christ. The genres were diaries, personal narratives, sermons and written in plain style. The effects make good authority of the Bible and church. The works are Bradford’s of Plymouth, A Narrative of the Captivity by Rowlandson, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Edward. In addition, first American magazines appeared such as American Magazine Andrew Bradford and Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine and Historical Chronicle.

Revolutionary Age and Early National Period (1775-1865). The styles of revolutionary age were political pamphlets, highly ornate, travel and persuasive writing. This period grew patriotism, instills pride, and national mission and also build the American character. The authors persuaded the readers to support revolutionary war in many works. The works are Poor Richard’s Almanac by Franklin, The Autobiography by Franklin and Writings of Jefferson, Paine, Henry and so on.

Romanticism (1800 – 1865). The works were appeared character sketches, slave narratives, poetry, and short story style. Feeling, intuiting, imaging played in these works. The context was expansion of magazines, newspapers and book publishing. The works were Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving, Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant, We Wear Mask by Dunbar, poems of Emily Dickinson, Poem of Walt Whitman, Prose Romance The Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville’s essay, “Hawthome and his Mosses and so on. The authors were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Mellville, Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthome, Harriet Breecher Stowe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Walt Withman.

Realistic Period – Naturalistic Period (1865 – 1914). Realistic Period had novels and shorts stories, objective narrator, not tell readers how to interpret story and make voice in dialogue from around the country. The effects of realistic period were social realism and aesthetic realism. The works were writings of Twain, Bierce, Crane, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Regional work like The Awakening Ethan Frome and My Antonia. The authors such as Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Bret Harte, Sarah Orne Jewett, Stephen Crane, Ezra Pound and so on.      

The Modernism (1914 – 1950). The famous works in this period were novels, and poetries. The characterizes that writer seek a unique style as highly experimental and use interior monologue and stream of consciousness. The effects of modern period people admired America as land of Eden, optimism and importance of the individual. Writers tried to show the ideas of Darwin that survival of the fittest and Karl Marx that how money and class structure control a nation). Generally, writers told about technological in 20^th Century and Raise of the youth culture. The works such as Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Poetry of Jeffers Williams, Short stories and novels of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Thurber, Welty, and Faulkner, Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and Wright’s Native Son and also the death of salesman by Miller.

Post Modernism (1950-1970). In general, the styles of writing were used such as mix fantasy and nonfiction, humorless, narratives, metafiction, tell present tense and so on. The historical context were Post – World War II prosperity and media culture interprets values. The works were The naked and The Dead and The Executioner’s songs by Mailer, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Kesey, Feminist and social issued poets like Plath, Rich, Sexton, Levertoy, Baraka, Cleaver, Morrison, Walker and Giovanni, Lawrence and Lee’s inherit the wind, stories and novels of Vonnegut and Catcher in the Rye by Salinger.

Contemporary (1970  - Present). The characterizes of Contemporary were Narratives that both fiction and nonfiction, Anti-heroes, Autobiographical essays, Humorous irony, and Emotion-provoking. The works were Cold Mountain by Frazier, Poetry of Dove, Cineros, Soto, Alexie, writings of Angelou, Walker’s the colour Purple and Haley’s Roots.